Panda Bear announces new album, shares lead single 'Dolphin'

The Animal Collective member's sixth studio album is called 'Buoys' and arrives on February 8, 2019 via Domino Records.

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Panda Bear has announced that his new album, 'Buoys', will drop on February 8, 2019. The album will mark the Animal Collective member's first in four years, a follow up to 2015's 'Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper'. Set for release via Domino Records, 'Buoys' was recorded in Lisbon, Portugal, and features production and mixing both by Panda Bear and Rusty Santos. It's a grand reunion for the producer duo as the last they teamed up was on Panda Bear's (real name Noah Benjamin Lennox) breakthrough 2007 solo album 'Person Pitch'. Panda Bear’s previous two albums, 2011’s Tomboy and 2015’s 'Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper', were co-produced by Spacemen 3’s Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember.

As Rolling Stone notes, for the new album, the duo drew from the producer’s recent work with trap and reggaeton artists including Chilean DJ/vocalist Lizz and Portuguese musician Dino D’Santiago, both of whom make appearances on 'Buoys'.

“The last three records felt like a chapter to me, and this feels like the beginning of something new,” Lennox said in a statement of 'Buoys', adding that he and Santos used contemporary music production techniques to create a sound that would “feel familiar to a young person’s ears.”

In anticipation of the new record, Panda Bear has shared the lead single 'Dolphin' from the album. The sparse, minimalistic track is a stark deviation from the experimental pop savant's previous body of work. Whereas his 2015 album drowned Lennox's voice under sprawling electronics and effects, the new song sees Panda Bear's vocals take center stage, supported by a single acoustic guitar and a barely-there bassline. But the clincher is the sample of dripping water, which runs throughout the song, which is accompanied by a simple, visualizer-styled video of a psychedelic dolphin floating between two waves. Check out the new song below, followed by the tracklist for the forthcoming album and the artwork.